Amazon is changing what is written in books
But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
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There are other ways to buy books, I don't understand why so many people have a boner for Amazon. It feels like Stockholm syndrome to me. I've never bought a single book from Amazon, not one.
The reality is that Amazon is the most convenient way to buy a lot of things, and as a result, people will put up with a lot of bullshit.
I genuinely try to buy things locally before I start looking online. It's increasingly difficult even for common items. The big box stores are shifting to branded only retailers. Where I used to be able to go to any hardware store and find a similar spread of items available, Lowe's, home Depot and Menards all offer their own lines of tools to varrying degrees. Menards is the worst about it, but they're all doing it.
Less common items are being phased out in stores, going to online order only. Where in the past you'd have your choice of just about any brand of thing you could think of in any store in any major town, now you're lucky to find certain things at all. And if I'm going to have to order it online anyway, Amazon has the best return policy.
Hobby or specialty items are easily marked up 300% locally. And you have to go to that specific store, which may require a fucking membership just to get an only marginally hyper inflated price. It's fine if it's one thing I need right now but I'm not going to pay for the privilege of shopping at a hobby shop. I'm at Costco every week and I'm salty about that membership. Jack Tanner's Leather Emporium isn't even getting my email address.
And frequently on Amazon it's not just the same thing, it's the exact same fucking product. Likely shipped to the hobby shop from Amazon. I get that these guys need to make a living, but bro, have a little respect for modern consumers. I'll pay a premium, I'm not signing up for anything and I'm not paying triple the price.
And even if you are resolved to buy online, and you try to go to the branded website to buy the specialty thing, Amazon has it, they have free shipping, and they'll get it to you tomorrow. But if you go to Rockler's website they're going to charge you 10-20 dollars to ship a single item, unless you spend more money, and it'll take two to three weeks to get to you.
I'm sorry, Amazon fucking won. Even if I say I'm willing to eat the cost, pay the shipping, pay a premium, and I'm willing to wait for the stuff I order, I'll even make an account at every shady ass website I want to order from and give all of them my payment information, regardless of how much I trust their security, because I know Amazon is a horrifically evil company, I'm a drop in the fucking bucket. So are you and anyone reading this.
It's just too fucking convenient. Too many competitors are cutting off the tail to try to keep up. They've won
Except we are talking about ebooks and none of what you've said applies to them. Amazon did not win in the ebooks department, as there are many other better platforms out there that don't fuck their people.
What you've written is true, but none of it applies to ebooks.
I do order from online stores quite a bit, but at least I minimize what data they have on me. For example, even before I started caring about privacy, I just happened to always receive the goods in the store's physical office and pay in cash (the former - because delivery to your door cost extra, the latter - because I was and still am uncomfortable using a card, especially online). That actually excludes the biggest Amazon-like marketplaces (we don't have Amazon itself, but have several similar ones), since they require prepaying for the order.
Recently I also started ordering without even interacting with the site - I just ask the cashier to order for me into this particular office, and decline when they ask for a phone number for the notification, saying I remember when to come and pick it up.
You're thinking like a techy, put yourself in the layman's shoes.
The Kindle was a pretty big deal as the first widespread e-reader. My tech-challenged mom got one and she loves how easy it is to get a book and have it there.
Given that this change won't really affect her, she probably doesn't care. There's a lot more people like my mom than you or I.
And your mother isn't complaining about it, which is not the audience I'm talking to. My whole issue is with those who choose amazon then complain about their practices. Especially in ebooks, there is actually no excuse for anyone to use amazon anymore. I understand some people have already bought many books from them and don't want to lose their books, but at least protest them not buying more books from them.
You can even buy books directly from publishers. Recently I wanted a hardback copy of a book and it was out of stock, backordered, or absurdly high priced on all the big popular online places. Ended up ordering it for MSRP from Penguin Random House direct.
Dude, literally. Lmao. I once had an author himself give me a link to his book to buy it. The freaking other himself. For our older parents and non-techy people, I understand using and sticking to amazon, they most likely won't even notice any of Amazon's bad practices, but young folks who are techy? Come on, you know better.
I’m constantly on the lookout for European alternatives. Are there any EU alternatives to Amazon?
Isn't Kobo made by rakuten? And Rakuten mainly operates in Germany? Also, hell get an e-reader with android on it and you can run all kinds of books on it without limiting yourself to just one company. There is even a Linux e-reader called pine note that you can buy.
Last time I looked (granted this was 7 or so years ago), it was pretty hard to find much, especially in English. Though German was worse, there were a few on-line retailers but because of (I’m guessing) copyright, they wouldn’t sell outside of Germany.
I’d love to find a good alternative to Amazon…
Kindle just works
I can read a book in a series, finish it, buy the next one and it’s ready to read before I’ve gotten a new cup of tea.
Lol. This is the exact same on...checks notes... every single other platform I know of. I have a kobo sage and it's the same, except that kobo runs on Linux and they don't lock their system. You can literally "jailbreak" it and still get updates from them. They also don't lock their books with encryption like on kindle so they lock you in. IMHO, there is 0 reasons to buy a kindle now, period.
I’ve tried the Kobo store (sold my Kindle and got a Libra 2 Color), but the selection is a bit lacking.
Some books just don’t exist there, which means I can’t just click and buy the next one from the Kobo UI.
You can buy those books (if possible) from the publisher directly and load them onto your Kobo via a computer.
Yep, but it’s not something I can do with one click on the sofa, which was my original point
@lepinkainen @penquin Kobo has a basic browser so you probably could. I downloaded a few copyright-free books from standardebooks.org directly onto my Kobo the other day.
I “could”, but it’s still a ton harder than just clicking “buy next book in series”
TBH it’s easier to plug calibre-web as a store in Kobo and just “acquire” all the books in all the series from … sources. Then you get the one click downloads easily 🤓
@penquin @lepinkainen Kobo also comes preloaded with overdrive so you can get books from the library as well. The wait can be quite long though - but if you have enough on hold that doesn't really matter too much
Does overdrive have only audio books or regular books, too?
@penquin probably depends on your library but mine has plenty of normal books on there.
@penquin to clarify, yes, it has loads of standard ebooks on there but it's up to your library how many copies, if any, of anything in the catalogue to make available. My library usually has about 3-4 copies of anything popular and you get them for two weeks, but you can delay the hold if your turn comes up and you're busy reading something else. If anything is crazy popular they will review and make more available to reduce the waiting time.
Thank you
I have a kobo sage and it's the same, except that kobo runs on Linux and they don't lock their system.
It runs on Android which runs on a Linux kernel. And Android is a tad bit too heavy for the kind of hardware the vendors tend to give e-readers, if you do anything outside the book-management-and-reader app. It's more open than Kindle, sure (i could even flash Lineagos on my Leaf, since the stock ROM had weird translation and apps), but if you just want an e-reader and maybe Nextcloud sync, i'd recommend PocketBook over everything else.
Edit: well, AOSP based custom ROM, not Android.
I've searched everywhere and nowhere does anyone mention that kobo runs android. It runs an actual Linux based OS, not android. I know android uses the Linux kernel but that is not the same as an actual Linux OS. It doesn't matter anyway, their shit is wide open and you can do whatever the hell you want to you kobo
Ok, "Android" is a certificate and requires, among others, Google Play Services and Store. Kobo doesn't have that, so my that's the issue. But it's a AOSP-based vendor ROM, same as Kindle's, so my point with performance still stands and battery is bad too. At least compared to PocketBook's, which run plain Linux and last a month.
I just checked them out and they have really low PPI on the one I want, the inkpad lite. It's 150 PPI. That's too low and would drive me insane.
That's not unlike the experience on my Kobo Elipsa 2e.
How is that Elipsa e2? I wanted to get it, but I discovered that it had a low PPI 227 and held off. I have eagle eyes and I hate seeing pixels. lol.. so I got the sage fantastic device, but I want the 10" screen so badly.
I have not been at all dissatisfied with its clarity. I bet on a LCD or OLED screen the DPI would be noticeable, but not on an e-ink display.
Thank you. Do you have another kobo with higher DPI that you can compare it to? I'm very weird when it comes to this. I can see pixels very easily and then would never be able to focus anymore. lol. I can't even use anything but 4k screens on my laptops and PC, that's how bad I am.
Sorry, no. No other e-ink devices at all.
No worries. Thank you